連結差動切り替え機構を有する球形ケーブル移動体の開発

―第2報：動力切り替え特性評価及び基本走行実験―

抄録

Tethered robots often face the entangling of the cable with obstacles in uncertain disaster environments. We have proposed a spherical tether handling device that unfastens a robot's tether during surveys by releasing the tether and carrying it aside. The device is able to move forward by driving the outer shells. When the device climbs obstacles, it alters the driving power from driving the shells to pull the tether to obtain high surmountability because of a coupled differential mechanism. Specific characteristics of the coupled differential mechanism were evaluated and experiments of basic travel motion of the device were performed in this paper. The results of the experiments show that the device can climb a height of 90.9% of its diameter. We also demonstrate a scenario to handle the tether and untangle multiple tangles in an environment with several obstacles.